Days to 1 million: the smartphone wars — In a fit of editorial sobriety, reader Noel just sent us this handy “1 million devices sold” graphic above. The image demonstrates the speed (in terms of days) at which each competing handset achieved the magic milestone.

iTunes Plus upgrades go à la carte — If you've been skipping the daily double-wet-cappuccino in order to save enough money to upgrade your iTunes library to the DRM-free iTunes Plus format, you can put coffee back on the menu. Apple has dispensed with the iTunes Store all-or-nothing upgrade policy.

Dell Readies Smartphone Offering — Dell Inc., aiming to rev up sales as its mainstay personal computer business struggles in the recession, is preparing a move into cellphones as early as next month, said people familiar with the matter. — The Round Rock, Texas, company has had a group …

Chrome, Firefox face clickjacking — Security researchers have discovered a flaw affecting Google's Chrome browser that exposes it to “clickjacking”—in which an attacker hijacks a browser's functions by substituting a legitimate link with one of the attacker's choice.

Rumour: Apple planning $19.99 games section on App Store — But only with a restricted number of publishers — Product: — Manufacturer: — Apple is planning to introduce a premium games section to its App Store where it will sell a range of iPhone games for $19.99, sources tell PocketGamer.biz.

8 Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2009, 2010 — Analyst firm Gartner has just released a report that highlights eight up-and-coming mobile technologies which they predict will impact the mobile industry over the course of the next two years. According to Nick Jones, vice president and analyst at the firm …

Sony vs. Nintendo: same bad economy, very different results — Sony and Nintendo released their financial reports on the holiday quarter this week, and both are being pummeled by the strength of the Japanese Yen. But Nintendo's focus on gaming and the strength of its console have left it in far better shape than its bigger rival.

President Obama uses RDFa — The WhiteHouse.gov site is CC licensing all its material, and if you peek behind the covers (view source), you will see some RDFa. Granted it is a small start, but it is a start. Well done to the new administration and I look forward to more openness and more Web mashups!

StatShot: Tech Job Cuts Inching Closer to 200,000 — The technology industry cut close to 186,955 jobs in 2008, up 74.2 percent from the 107,295 job cuts recorded in 2007, according to data collected by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a recruitment company based in Chicago.

Microsoft patents the interface to transform your phone into a PC — The power of modern smartphones in many ways equals and even surpasses the power of a desktop PC of just few years ago. You know, things like CPUs faster then 800 Mhz, hundreds of megabytes of RAM, tens of gygabytes of storage, dedicated graphics accelerators, etc;.

iPhone 2,1 — Recently, one of the users of Pinch Analytics noticed the string “iPhone 2,1″ appearing in their version reporting, and realized that if Apple stuck to its naming conventions, this might be the next version of the iPhone. At Pinch Media, we've seen this for some time now …

Intel to detail eight-core Xeon processor — Intel plans to detail an eight-core Xeon processor at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco next month, offering an early look at what appears to be the company's first eight-core chip.

Swiss police spy marijuana field with Google Earth — ZURICH, Switzerland - Swiss police said Thursday they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping software. — Police said the find was part of a bigger investigation …

The Eye of the (BlackBerry) Storm — iSuppli took apart Research In Motion's BlackBerry Storm to determine the cost of its components. Guess what? The iPhone parts are cheaper — As the battle for the smartphone market heats up, comparisons abound between Research In Motion's BlackBerry Storm …

Leave Steve Jobs Alone — Disclosing more won't help Apple shareholders. — One day you wake up and don't feel quite yourself. The next day is no better, nor is the next week. Eventually you go to the doctor, who tells you that you have cancer. Heroically, you stay on the job …

$2.99 Printed PhotoBooks Now Available On Facebook: HotPrints — Anyone who has turned digital photos into a printed photo book via Apple iPhoto or any of a variety of competitors knows how great they are. They make a perfect gift, if you can afford the $20 - $30 they generally cost to create, plus shipping.

Twitter — The original gently rising path that marked the growth of my Twitter followers has recently taken a sharp upward path, due in part no doubt to my (cut short) discussion of Twitter on the Jonathan Ross show on BBC television, broadcast in the UK in the third week of January.

Microsoft: More Zunes coming in 2009 — Remember that teenage trick of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, “I can't hear you”? That's how I felt on Thursday morning when I talked to Adam Sohn, the marketing director for Zune. — I don't mean that Microsoft is oblivious to reality …

Nintendo cuts profit forecast by 33 per cent — Nintendo, the maker of the Wii games console and the favourite safe-haven share on the Tokyo stock exchange, has stunned the market with a 33 per cent cut to its full-year profit forecasts. — Analysts described Nintendo's guidance as a …

Twitter is a Cash Cow in the Making — We have been talking a great deal lately about how Twitter should be monetizing their service. Most of this talk comes after news that Twitter secured $20 million in venture capital, to push its total valuation to $250 million.

Bringing OpenID and OAuth Together — We are happy to announce an important enhancement to our recently launched OpenID endpoint. Google now supports the “Hybrid Protocol”, combining OpenID federated login together with OAuth access authorization. Websites can now ask Google to sign …

On Networking Sites, Learning How Not to Share — YOUR boss saw pictures of you drunk at last Saturday's party. An old flame found out you're seeing someone else. The nosy neighbor discovered you were laid off. — These and many other uncomfortable scenes are repeated daily on social networking sites …

5 Problems of Recommender Systems — Earlier this week we posted a Guide to Recommender Systems, as part of our series on recommendation technologies. In this post we look at some of the challenges in building or deploying a recommender system. And yes, Napoleon Dynamite is one of them.

Paved with good intentions — Is “broadband for all” a recipe for recovery, or a boondoggle? — BEGGING for government help would have made you a pariah in most parts of the high-tech industry a few months ago. But these days state aid, and how to dole it out, are nearly as hotly debated …

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